The Impact of Incumbent/Opposition Status and Ideological Similitude on Emotions in Political Manifestos
This addresses the problem of understanding how political party status and ideology influence emotional language in manifestos, providing incremental insights into political communication.
The study analyzed emotion-associated language in UK Conservative and Labour party election manifestos from 2000 to 2019, finding that incumbent parties use more positive words and opposition parties use more negative words, and that ideologically similar parties also use more positive language.
The study involved the analysis of emotion-associated language in the UK Conservative and Labour party general election manifestos between 2000 to 2019. While previous research have shown a general correlation between ideological positioning and overlap of public policies, there are still conflicting results in matters of sentiments in such manifestos. Using new data, we present how valence level can be swayed by party status within government with incumbent parties presenting a higher frequency in positive emotion-associated words while negative emotion-associated words are more prevalent in opposition parties. We also demonstrate that parties with ideological similitude use positive language prominently further adding to the literature on the relationship between sentiments and party status.